American Institute in Taiwan (AIT) Deputy Director Raymond Greene yesterday offered some suggestions to help move Taiwan’s innovation culture into a higher gear at the opening ceremony of Meet Taipei 2019 at the Taipei Expo Dome.
The event allows local start-ups to exhibit their ideas and network with key partners in the nation’s start-up ecosystem.
To further boost Taiwan’s innovation culture, the ties between the start-up community, academia and research institutions should be closer, and everyone should pursue any and all international exchange opportunities, Greene said.
“The secret sauce of US innovation is close collaboration between academia, industry and research institutions. Virtually all innovation clusters in the United States emerged out of anchor universities,” he said, citing Silicon Valley and the Research Triangle in North Carolina.
Much of Taiwan’s technology industry was established by people who studied in the US, especially in the semiconductor industry, such as Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co founder Morris Chang (張忠謀) and Etron Technology Inc founder Nicky Lu (盧超群).
“When Taiwanese talent studies or works in the United States, they return equipped not only with the skills and vision to succeed in Taiwan, but also the personal connections that form the glue of US-Taiwan technology cooperation,” Greene said.
Greene, formerly a researcher at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington, said that Taiwan’s future depends upon it moving up the value chain to become a fully fledged innovation-based economy, and this depends almost entirely upon cultivating a vibrant start-up ecosystem.
More than 400 start-ups from such fields as artificial intelligence (AI), mobile applications, communications devices, the Internet of Things (IoT), cloud computing and blockchain are participating at the event, organized by Business Next Media, the Taipei Expo Foundation and the Taipei Department of Economic Development.
Greene said US-Taiwan start-up cooperation is robust, as demonstrated by the cooperation between the two sides under the auspices of the US-Taiwan Small and Medium-sized Enterprise Work Plan over the past three years, as well as the joint organization last year of the Global Entrepreneurship Congress on using AI and IoT for social good and the first Women’s Economic Empowerment Summit in April.
The AIT next year is looking to expand opportunities for social and female entrepreneurs, as well as to continue the integration of the start-up ecosystems of the US, Taiwan and Southeast Asian nations, Greene said.
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